Vegas Vantage Point for Week 15

Posted by PyromaniacMo on 12/14/17

SHARE ON

This weekly piece is intended to shed light on two primary factors that can weigh heavily upon your fantasy football decision making. Basically, we want to use Vegas in a helpful, predictive way. The first advantage to be gained exposes teams that are likely to be amongst the highest scoring of the week. Next, we want to prognosticate even further and decide which positions, on those teams, will get the most opportunity to score. In other words, which teams will score points, and which positions have the best chance of leading those teams.

Just remember to check the game times. There are plenty of different slate options as we have a Thursday game and two Saturday games for Week #15

If you are looking for a shoot-out, look no further than the Pats visiting the Steelers. This game is the only one set to go for over 50. It opened at 54 points and only a 1 point spread. Basically, if you have New England and/or Pittsburgh players, get them in. Chris Hogan looks to return this week. He was already able to get in a limited practice. Pay attention to reports, if he is able to get in a full practice, then I like him as a relatively inexpensive play with very high upside. Remember, he is a favorite of Brady in the red zone. With 27.5 implied points, that is a position that Brady’s boys should be in more often than not. You have to like Brandin Cooks and of course Gronkowski. The RB community continues between Lewis, Burkhead, and the other Patriot backs. You can count on it every week, Lewis is a solid floor play and Burkhead is your ceiling. If you want possible exposure to the majority of the scoring, then Brady is your guy. In DFS, Bell will likely see a high percentage of ownership. If you can manage your budget, stacking him with Brown would be a powerful line-up for your opposition to contend with. It will be hard to go wrong in this contest, these guys are studs and Vegas has this as the highest scoring game by far. This is a great game stack. Of course, I will have some GPP exposure to 0% of this game for a contrarian approach, but that will be a small percentage of my line-ups.

You will also want to pay similar attention to the Saints. For Week #15, they have the highest implied team total at 31 points. Certainly Brees will be at the center of this. They are indeed home. Engram is attractive this week as Kamara is coming off a concussion. Sean Payton sounds optimistic about his chances to play. Kamara cleared a major hurdle as he already logged a full practice this week, but officially, you will want to double check his status as he has not cleared concussion protocol at the time of posting this article. So, if he is out, or plays with a reduction in his role, Engram will be in line to benefit and has been a solid cash play all season. The Jets are a funnel D as opponents look to take advantage of their weak secondary. Football Outsiders ranks them 27th against the pass. Indeed, they also rank them 27th against opposing #1 WRs. Thus, you have to like Michael Thomas, but the fear is they get up early and rely on the ground game. Game script heavily favors the backs in this contest as they have the highest spread of the week, a whopping 15 points. That spread represents the highest for Week #15. Accordingly, if it plays out as Vegas is predicting, both of the Saints backs should be solid plays. Again, just monitor Kamara’s health.

There are two other backs who should see a predominant run heavy script. The Vikings are home to the Bengals and are favored by 10.5 points. Latavius Murray should get a lot of work and will certainly get Red Zone attention. In addition to Murray, Fournette should have a positive game script as well. The Jags are home to Houston and Vegas opened this contest with Jacksonville as 11 point favorites. He racked up his 5th triple-digit rushing day last week. He has been banged up and was held out of practice Wednesday because of his quad, which is a new tweak on his laundry list of bumps and bruises. Still, this game script should heavily favor the ground attack.

Starting in Week 7, I started tossing out picks. My record thus far:

Straight bets Against the Spread: 13-7-2

For Week 15:

NO(-16)

MIN (-11)

DAL (-3)

ATL (-6)

SF (-2)

BUF currently OFF but I can easily see Miami having a letdown after a short week an upset.